After the end of the Cold War, Western societies experienced a few years of self-confidence. Awareness of the vulnerability and fragility of democracy faded. Francis Fukuyama even proclaimed the ‘end of history’. As he put it, humanity had reached ‘the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’.1 Thirty years later, it seems as if we are separated by an epoch from the optimism of the 1990s. The fragility of democracy is obvious. From the outside, democracy as a form of government is threatened by dictatorships such as China, Russia and Iran, which represent a global alternative to the idea of Western democracy. Internally, it is being challenged by populist and far-right movements that are fighting the liberal core of democracies. Even traditional democracies that have appeared stable for centuries are under pressure. No one can predict whether French and US democracy will still exist after the next presidential elections or whether they will shift towards authoritarian forms of government. ‘Concern about democracy has become the hallmark of a new historical era’, the German historian and journalist Volker Ullrich recently stated.2
The global fragility of democracy is the current background to the subject matter of this volume. The contemporary developments are the starting point for the interest in the history of Central Europe between the two world wars. In this period, Central Europe was a prominent crisis region for democracy. Parliamentary democracies that had been established all over Central Europe in 1918 failed not only in Germany, but also in the newly created nation states of East-Central and South-East Europe, with authoritarian and fascist forms of government taking their place.3
In Hungary, which had lost the war as part of the Habsburg monarchy and lost a large part of its territory in the Peace of Trianon, the democratic republic proclaimed by Prime Minister Mihály Károlyi on 16 November 1918 was extremely short-lived. In March 1919, a communist revolution led by Béla Kun overthrew the parliamentary regime and established the Hungarian Soviet Republic. After its collapse that summer, the former Austro-Hungarian admiral Miklós Horthy, who had previously formed a conservative counter-government to the Communists in Szeged, entered Budapest with his troops on 16 November 1919. Elected by the National Assembly as imperial administrator, Horthy formally re-established the monarchy on 1 March 1920, but subsequently remained de facto head of state. Horthy’s Hungary was characterized by White Terror, antisemitism and the growing influence of fascist forces.4
Unlike Hungary, Romania was one of the winners of the First World War, gaining control over Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania. Formally a monarchy with a liberal charter modelled on the Belgian Constitution, the Kingdom of Romania only imperfectly fulfilled its democratic promise throughout its existence. Although there was universal suffrage, at least for men, a graduated weighting of votes according to income left the vast majority of the population politically disadvantaged. As in many other European countries, Romania experienced an increasingly authoritarian turn in the interwar period, which ultimately ended in a royal dictatorship under Carol II in 1938. At the same time, fascist movements, such as the so-called Iron Guard, gained strength in Romania. After the coup in 1940, General Ion Antonescu established a fascist dictatorship in Romania, which fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Allies and actively participated in the Holocaust.5
In Poland, parliamentary democracy was restricted by a military coup. In May 1926, Józef Piłsudski, the founder of the state and defender of the fatherland in the Polish–Soviet War, marched on Warsaw at the head of regiments loyal to him, compelling President Stanisław Wojciechowski and the Cabinet of Prime Minister Wincenty Witos to resign. Piłsudski was re-elected head of state by the National Assembly, but renounced the presidency and left the office to his loyal candidate Ignacy Mościcki. Piłsudski subsequently ruled the country in various roles, including as Minister of Defence. His coup aimed at restoring ‘mental health’ to public life. The name of his faction Sanacja (sanation) was to be understood as ‘moral renewal’ or ‘moral purification’.6
Among the East-Central European states Czechoslovakia was an exception, where democracy was only abolished in the wake of foreign policy developments: the Munich Agreement in 1938 and the annexation of the Czech part of the country by Germany in March 1939. Until then, the foundations of Czechoslovakia’s political system – parliamentary democracy and universal vote – were never seriously challenged. However, the political culture in Czechoslovakia changed dramatically in the transition from the First Republic, which was characterized by the republican presidents T.G. Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, to the Second Republic, which was founded after the disgraceful Munich Agreement and the cession of the Sudeten territories. After two decades of constitutional stability, the parliamentary system collapsed within two months. An authoritarian regime was installed that abolished many basic political and civil rights. The fact that this did not happen under external pressure and without protest from the Czechoslovak public casts an ambivalent light on the political culture of Czechoslovakia before 1938. It has been argued that the mental preconditions for the abolition of democracy in the Second Republic had already been created during the First Republic.7
In March 1939, the Second Republic, known as Czecho-Slovakia (with a hyphen), was broken up when Slovak politicians proclaimed an independent Slovak state at the urging of the Germans. This first Slovak nation state was an ultra-nationalist one-party dictatorship of the Hlinka Slovak People’s Party (Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana, known as the Ľudáci or Ludaks) under President Jozef Tiso and Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka, with Tuka in particular advocating unconditional collaboration with the Third Reich.
Developments in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were linked to those in Germany. Germany was a destabilizing factor, first through the crisis of its own democracy in the founding phase (1919–23), when it had to contend with the immediate consequences of the war, hyperinflation and numerous attempted coups and political assassinations. After five years of relative stability from 1924 to 1929, the global economic crisis in 1929 and the authoritarian transformation of the republic by the presidential rule paved the way for the transfer of power to the National Socialists. The political crisis in the largest country in Central Europe had a decisive impact on its eastern neighbours. Germany’s foreign policy also had a destabilizing effect, particularly on Poland and, from the mid-1930s, Czechoslovakia. Germany had officially recognized its western border at the Locarno Conference in 1925, but refused to make a corresponding treaty commitment for its eastern border.
With regard to the crisis of democracy today, the question arises as to whether there are lessons to be learnt from the failure of democracy in the interwar period. For Germany, this is a classic question: is the second democracy that emerged in (West) Germany after the Second World War threatened with a fate similar to that of the German Republic, which was founded in 1918 as the successor state to the defunct German Empire? The first German republic to be proclaimed on a national level was established in 1918 as a parliamentary democracy, whose democratic structures were already undermined by emergency decrees issued by the Reich President before the National Socialists came to power in 1933. Officially, the republic retained the name ‘German Reich’. Its unofficial name ‘Weimar Republic’ was a reminder of the existential crisis that democracy had been facing from the outset. In view of the revolutionary mood, the National Constituent Assembly of the new republic was unable to convene in the imperial capital and moved to the Thuringian province. It met in the National Theatre in Weimar from February 1919 to May 1920.
Can Weimar be compared to Bonn and Berlin? With the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, this question became a key issue in democratic crisis discourse. The political culture of the early Federal Republic was characterized, at times obsessively, by the question of whether the fate of the Weimar Republic could be repeated. The Basic Law of the Federal Republic reflects certain lessons that the framers of the Constitution had learnt from the history of Weimar: in the Constitution of the Bonn Republic, the executive was strengthened in relation to both the president and parliament. The president no longer has the power to rule by emergency decree, and parliament can only overthrow the government if it has a majority to elect a new government. Apart from the constitutional lessons learnt from the failure of the first German republic, ‘Weimar’ is linked to a variety of interpretations that have different functions in different political camps: conservatives referred to the experiences of Weimar in order to prevent an open pluralistic society and a party democracy. Left-wingers and liberals saw the causes of the failure of Weimar precisely in the inadequate development of a political culture modelled on the West. In his study of the German ‘Weimar Complex’, Sebastian Ullrich concludes that ‘a complete history of the Federal Republic could almost be written in the mirror of the ever-present, and with varying intensity, examination of the history of the first German republic’.8
The publication of Karl Dietrich Bracher’s study on the dissolution of the Weimar Republic in 1955 marked a significant turning point in the Weimar discourse of the Federal Republic.9 Unlike conservative historians such as Karl Dietrich Erdmann and Werner Conze, who rejected the Weimar Republic as a supposed party democracy, Bracher regarded the first German republic not as having too much democracy, but too little. He blamed the bourgeoisie’s lack of commitment to democracy on long-lasting traditions that had developed when German liberalism was defeated by Bismarck’s authoritarian state. According to Bracher, the deeper reason for the failure of the Weimar Republic lay in the fact that it had not developed structures that corresponded to a pluralistic, Western-parliamentary party democracy. ‘The Weimar state had to reckon with a structure of consciousness that, after the long habit of comfortable authoritarian administration in place of democratically legitimized politics, was just as unable to cope with the sudden and novel demands and problems of a parliamentary republic as it was with the increased burdens of the global economic crisis’, summarized Bracher in his inaugural lecture at the Free University in Berlin in 1955.10
Bracher’s new approach was that he did not see the solution in the containment of democracy through constitutional regulations, but rather in a critical reappraisal of culturally entrenched anti-democratic traditions that distinguished the German path to modernity from that of its Western neighbours. The more the Federal Republic consolidated itself as a democracy, the more the Weimar discourse in Germany lost its function. It became widely accepted that Bonn was not Weimar,11 even if the failure of the first German republic kept popping up like a haunting spectre in times of crisis.
A remarkable contradiction has become apparent in recent years. In historiography, the Weimar Republic is being revalued. It is seen less and less in terms of its failure, and its modernity and future viability are increasingly being emphasized.12 The director of the German Historical Museum, Raphael Gross, previously brought the Weimar Republic into play as a reflection of the present. Gross said that this hopeless period should be seen as a laboratory for democracy and its lessons used as an arsenal for overcoming today’s crisis.13 When historian Hedwig Richter argued in favour of abandoning the Weimar comparison, as it was based on a reduced understanding of democracy, political scientist Alexander Gallus replied:
However, it seems premature to immediately dismiss the Weimar Republic as a comparative foil and historical laboratory of democracy. The constellations and centres of crisis have changed with the times, and we cannot simply derive concrete answers to today’s problems from the Weimar era. But where else can history, which is known to rhyme at best, do this? It is precisely by recognising and describing more precisely that Weimar is different from our present and yet at the same time part of a dynamic democratic course that we should continue to learn a lot from this history. So let’s avoid Weimar reflexes, but continue to reflect on Weimar.14
In July 2024, historian and journalist Volker Ullrich wrote a book about the ‘inexorable failure of the Weimar Republic’. Like Gallus, he views the Weimar Republic as a laboratory of political action that is instructive for the present day. Ullrich focuses on the strategies and actions of the Republic’s political actors and analyses when the decisions were made that made it possible for the National Socialists to seize power. He concludes that Hitler’s rise to the highest office of the state was avoidable until the very end.
It is significant that Ullrich’s book is being published during a global crisis of democracy. It focuses on the possibility of avoiding the seizure of power by anti-democratic politicians by analysing the mistakes of Weimar politics. Even though the historian Volker Ullrich is indebted to the political scientist Karl Dietrich Bracher, the different perspectives of the two are paradigmatic: while Bracher sees the actual reason for the weakness of the Weimar Republic in the long-term cultural traditions, Ullrich is interested in the failed avoidance of Hitler in the politics of the Weimar Republic from a close-up perspective.15
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In the Central and Eastern European states, there is no comparable discussion about the failure of democracies in the interwar period. There are obvious reasons for this. In Poland and Czechoslovakia in particular, historiography and memory after 1945 were primarily characterized by the experience of the German occupation and war crimes. It was the Sovietization of the East Central European states after the war that preoccupied contemporary historiography after 1989. A connection between the political cultures of the interwar period and the present has rarely been established. One monumental exception is the work on the history of political thought in East-Central Europe, which presents a comprehensive overview of political thinkers from the countries of East-Central and South-East Europe, and also establishes links between the interwar period and the period since 1989.16
The essays published together in this volume deal with the political culture of Central Europe in various ways. The aim of this volume is to link the German debate with the history of East-Central Europe. To this end, it is necessary to detach the German, at times obsessive, preoccupation with the downfall of the Weimar Republic from its predominantly constitutional historical focus. It is significant that the authors, regardless of whether they work in East-Central Europe or at Western European and American universities, choose the approach associated with Bracher’s name in the German Weimar discussion: the authors are not concerned with the political mechanics and strategies of the actors, but predominantly with cultural traditions that had a mortgaging effect on the democracies in the interwar period and are having an effect again today.
Stefanie Middendorf, Madeleine Hartmann, Dietmar Müller and Jakub Rákosník discuss the crises of the political order. Stefanie Middendorf explores the interwar period as a space where crises of democracy and capitalism were deeply intertwined, producing legacies that continue to shape how we understand and respond to crises today. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck, she defines crisis less as objective fact than as narrated rupture – between past experiences and future expectations – creating pressure for decision and action. In Weimar Germany, crisis discourse was omnipresent. Yet rather than only pessimism and decline, it also embodied moments of departure and opportunity. Perceptions, emotions and rhetoric determined whether events became crises, and these were often framed simultaneously in political and economic terms.
War experience remained central. German society perceived itself still in combat, legitimizing extraordinary measures in governance and finance. Wartime practices – fictitious budgets, emergency decrees and bureaucratic discretion – persisted into peacetime. Fiscal policy became a battlefield where sovereignty, legality and international oversight collided. Budget law, once parliament’s core power, was increasingly reinterpreted as a mere administrative act, enabling technocratic and executive dominance. Emergency decrees, especially after 1930, sidelined parliament and entrenched practices later exploited by the Nazis.
Legal theorists such as Carl Schmitt argued for presidential sovereignty and exceptional powers, rejecting parliamentary participation. The rhetoric of objectivity and efficiency, rooted in wartime mobilization, justified authoritarian strategies within a democratic framework. Thus, emergency governance normalized states of exception, with technocracy replacing parliamentary deliberation in crucial areas like budgeting.
Like Stefanie Middendorf, Madeleine Hartmann and Dietmar Müller also focus on the crisis of the rule of law, which they examine in Poland and Romania. Their point of departure lies in the constitutional debates in Poland and Romania after 1989. While rule of law debates often emphasize horizontal separation between the executive, legislature, and judiciary, the authors argue that overlooking territorial dimensions ignores historical legacies of centralism and minority politics in East Central and Southeastern Europe.
Both Poland and Romania defined themselves as unitary nation states in their postcommunist constitutions, reflecting long-standing traditions dating back to the interwar period. After the First World War, each state incorporated ethnically diverse territories – Silesia in Poland, Transylvania in Romania – and signed minority protection treaties. Yet in practice, interwar governments pursued centralization, treating regionalism and minority autonomy as threats. These patterns re-emerged after 1989, shaping postcommunist debates.
In Poland, the legacy of Solidarność, which had promoted self-government in the 1980s, fostered stronger decentralization. The 1990 Local Self-Government Act created elected communes, and minorities such as Germans and Silesians organized politically. Yet tensions persist: the Silesian identity is still not recognized as an ethnic minority, and right-wing governments have curtailed minority protections.
In Romania, the transformation was dominated by postcommunist elites who invoked continuity with the 1923 centralist Constitution. The 1991 Constitution enshrined Romania as a ‘sovereign, independent, unitary and indivisible nation state’, rejecting proposals by Hungarian and German representatives to soften the ethnic definition of the nation or expand minority rights. Regionalism remains stigmatized as a ‘Hungarian affair’.
The conclusion highlights that ignoring vertical power-sharing risks undermining the rule of law. Minority rights, subsidiarity and regional governance are not just administrative questions, but also core elements of democratic pluralism. In both Poland and Romania, historical memories of interwar fragility continue to shape how elites define the nation, the state and the scope of democracy.
Jakub Rákosník’s chapter traces the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) from its foundation in 1921 to its decline after 2021, analysing why it was so strong in interwar Europe and why it persisted as an ‘anti-system party’ after 1989.
In the interwar years (1921–38), the KSČ quickly became one of Europe’s strongest communist movements, with remarkable electoral success: in 1925 it was the largest party in the Bohemian lands and second nationwide. Its strength stemmed from structural and personal factors. The proportional electoral system and consociational democracy enabled fragmented parliaments and broad coalitions, leaving anti-system parties like the KSČ and the Sudeten German Party as key outlets for protest. By 1935, almost half the electorate supported anti-system forces, undermining stability. Still, repression remained relatively mild; the KSČ was never banned. Leadership also mattered: Bohumír Šmeral’s decision to split from Social Democracy created a strong communist bloc, but paradoxically stabilized democracy by leaving behind a moderate Social Democratic partner for governing coalitions. Without this, Czechoslovakia might have followed Germany or Austria into authoritarianism sooner.
In the post-1989 Czech Republic, the KSČM (Communist Party of the Czech Lands and Moriavia) again functioned as an anti-system party – strong in protest but excluded from coalitions, its base consisting largely of older, less-educated, peripheral voters. Yet, unlike the interwar KSČ, it was no longer revolutionary: its electorate wanted social security, not Marxist revolution. The chapter concludes that while the KSČ once paradoxically helped stabilize democracy by splitting the left, today the absence of a systemic opposition poses risks. With Communists gone, dissatisfied voters turn to populist or far-right anti-system parties like ANO or SPD.
Melissa Feinberg, Darina Volf and Paul Hanebrink examine the influence of religion on the history of democracy in East-Central Europe. Melissa Feinberg’s chapter traces Czech anti-gender activism in historical perspective, showing continuities between interwar opposition to women’s equality and today’s campaigns against ‘gender ideology’. It opens with Catholic priest Petr Pithart’s 2018 denunciation of the Istanbul Convention’, portraying it as a threat to families and children – rhetoric echoing pan-European anti-gender movements. Yet the claim that feminism is a foreign import obscures a strong local history of both feminism and anti-feminism. After independence in 1918, Czechoslovakia granted women suffrage, which was celebrated as proof of democratic modernity. But resistance to broader gender equality quickly emerged. Catholic and conservative activists defended the patriarchal family as natural and divinely sanctioned. Women’s right to work, especially in civil service, provoked fierce attacks. In the 1930s, married ‘double-earners’ were condemned as greedy and unpatriotic, blamed for male unemployment and targeted for dismissal. Such rhetoric paralleled today’s portrayal of feminists and LGBTQ activists as destabilizing the family and the nation.
By the late 1930s, right-wing and Catholic groups converged around anti-feminist and pro-natalist policies. The authoritarian Second Republic, created after the 1938 Munich Agreement, banned most married women from state employment and elevated family protection into its core program, aligning Czechoslovakia with fascist gender politics elsewhere in Europe. The message was consistent: women’s emancipation endangered social order, while motherhood and submission were framed as their true destiny. Contemporary Czech anti-gender discourse reprises these themes.
Darina Volf’s chapter examines the relationship between state, nation and religion in Slovakia, linking interwar developments to today’s democratic challenges. She argues that the roots of Slovakia’s deep societal polarization lie in the interwar fusion of Catholicism and Slovak nationalism, which marginalized Protestant traditions and continues to shape politics and memory culture.
Slovak elites in interwar Czechoslovakia celebrated the end of Hungarian rule, but soon became dissatisfied with Prague’s secularism and centralism. The Catholic majority, feeling sidelined by Protestant elites allied with the new state, advanced the idea that Catholicism and Slovak nationhood were inseparable. The Slovak People’s Party under Andrej Hlinka positioned itself as the sole representative of Slovak interests, discrediting Protestants as opportunists or traitors.
This interwar legacy endures. After 1989, Slovakia searched for a ‘usable past’. While figures like Štefánik served as integrative heroes, Hlinka – and to some extent Tiso – became symbols of nationalist Catholic identity. Their commemoration remains divisive: Catholics and conservatives portray Hlinka as ‘father of the nation’, while Protestants and liberals denounce his intolerance. Far-right parties such as Kotleba’s openly exploit Hlinka and Tiso’s legacies, using slogans like ‘For God, for the nation’ and promoting racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Roma rhetoric under a Catholic nationalist banner.
Paul Hanebrink’s chapter traces the long history of Christian nationalism in Hungary, from its origins in the late nineteenth century to its revival under Viktor Orbán. He shows how religion, nationalism and historical memory have been repeatedly entwined in illiberal projects that link xenophobia to fears of moral and gender disorder.
The roots lie in the 1890s, when liberal law makers introduced civil marriage and full legal equality for Jews. Catholic leaders denounced these reforms as cosmopolitan attacks on Hungary’s Christian foundations, casting liberalism itself as foreign and corrosive. This discourse persisted into the interwar years, when Hungary’s defeat in the First World War, the 1919 Bolshevik regime and the Treaty of Trianon inspired counter-revolutionaries to proclaim a ‘Christian Hungary’. They justified repression of labour, exclusion of Jews and calls for territorial revisionism as national resurrection. Christian nationalism thus served both as anti-liberal ideology and as a framework for antisemitism, culminating in discriminatory laws, White Terror and eventual complicity in the Holocaust.
Interwar Christian nationalism was marked by contradictions. While intensely antisemitic, it tolerated vibrant queer subcultures and did not undo civil marriage laws. Yet it also mobilized demographic fears, using eugenics and pro-natalist policies to control women’s sexuality and expand Hungary’s Christian population. By the late 1930s, these biopolitical anxieties had fused with racial antisemitism, culminating in the 1941 ‘Third Jewish Law’, which prohibited marriage between Jews and Christians, and ultimately in mass deportations carried out during the German occupation.
After 1945, Communists denounced interwar Hungary as fascist and stripped churches of power, but the memory of Christian Hungary endured. Following 1989, conservatives revived it as a national tradition. Under Viktor Orbán, Fidesz has made Christian nationalism the ideological core of its illiberal democracy. Like their interwar predecessors, today’s leaders frame liberalism as alien, while presenting Christian family values as the nation’s bulwark.
Orbán’s Christian nationalism has found admirers abroad, particularly among US conservatives, who hail Hungary as a model of pro-family, nationalist government. The chapter concludes that while the 1930s are not repeating themselves, the ideological legacy of Christian Hungary has been repurposed for today’s illiberal moment.
In the final section of the volume, Ota Konrád and Daniel Siemens discuss the crisis of the interwar period in relation to violence.
Ota Konrád analyses three moments of democratic transition in Czechoslovakia – 1918, 1945 and 1989 – through the lenses of victory, homogeneity and international order. He argues that democracy’s stability depends not only on institutions but also on how societies manage violence, define collective identity and anchor themselves internationally.
In 1918, the new republic emerged from the Habsburg collapse as a victorious state. Despite ethnic diversity – Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, Jews and others – violence was limited compared to neighbouring countries. Mechanisms of de-escalation included symbolic rather than physical violence, a consociational democracy that integrated minorities, and narratives of progress that framed tensions as temporary. Yet unresolved contradictions – especially Czech–German relations – resurfaced during the Depression, fuelling radicalization.
In 1945, victory over Nazi Germany created a different trajectory. Postwar violence against Germans and collaborators – pogroms, expulsions and executions – was tolerated or encouraged by the state. Ethnic homogenization became central to the vision of a new ‘people’s democracy’. The expulsions of three million Germans radically reshaped society, producing ethnic homogeneity but also legitimizing violence as a political tool. The short-lived ‘Third Republic’ (1945–48) collapsed quickly, paving the way for communism, as postwar violence undermined democratic stability.
In 1989, by contrast, the fall of communism unfolded as a nonviolent ‘victory’. Homogeneity – now the product of earlier expulsions and decades of socialism – enabled a broad revolutionary consensus. Ethnic and political violence remained marginal, though far-right anti-Roma violence in the 1990s and 2010s revealed underlying tensions.
In 1918, pluralism survived through compromise; in 1945, violence and homogenization destroyed democracy; in 1989, unity and integration sustained it. Yet current challenges – growing social inequality, refugee debates, international instability and fading memory of 1989 – raise the following question: how stable is Czech democracy today?
In his chapter, Daniel Siemens reflects on how historians have studied fascist movements in interwar Europe, weighing the strengths and limits of practice history (historical praxeology). This approach, inspired by Bourdieu, Giddens and everyday history, focuses on routine actions, social practices and grassroots experiences rather than ideological programs. It has highlighted how fascist militias like the SA (Sturmabteilung, Storm Division), the Iron Guard and the Arrow Cross built communities through rituals, uniforms, marches and occasional violence. By privileging ‘doing’ over ‘thinking’, it shows how movements mobilized followers and normalized violence.
Yet Siemens stresses that practice history alone is insufficient. It risks downplaying the role of ideology, religion and long-term worldviews. While practice scholars argue that violence itself created community, empirical studies reveal wide variation: some groups were highly violent (e.g. Italian Squadristi, early SA), others less so, and often violence fluctuated with context. Moreover, many fascist activists were motivated not only by situational opportunities but also by nationalist, religious or utopian ideals. Examples include the Romanian Iron Guard’s fusion of violence with Orthodox mysticism, or the Croatian Ustasha’s seminary-trained leaders framing brutality as moral duty. Such cases show that ideology and belief shaped practices as much as practices shaped ideology.
Siemens concludes that historians must not rely on practice history alone. While it fruitfully connects micro- and macro-levels and reveals how activism worked on the ground, it cannot explain the depth of ideological motivation or the transnational appeal of fascism. A fuller account of interwar violence, and its possible echoes today, requires combining practice history with intellectual, religious, and social history – anchoring action in meaning as well as routine.
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All authors draw cautious parallels between the interwar period and today’s crisis of democracy: Stefanie Middendorf stresses that both Weimar Germany and today are defined by polycrisis – an accumulation of political, economic and social disruptions narrated as epochal breaks. In both eras, crises were not objective facts, but constructed through rhetoric, emotion and expectation. Weimar’s fiscal struggles, debt burdens and parliamentary fragility echo today’s debates on austerity, emergency governance and democratic legitimacy. Hartmann and Müller argue that Poland and Romania’s post-1989 constitutions reproduced interwar traditions of unitary, centralist states. In both eras, central elites feared regional autonomy as a threat to national unity. Today, as then, this majoritarian vision undermines minority rights and pluralism. Jakub Rákosník highlights parallels between interwar and post-1989 anti-system politics. In both cases, large segments of the electorate supported parties rejecting the democratic framework (Communists then, populists or far right today). Interwar Communists paradoxically stabilized democracy by splitting the left; today, the absence of such a structured anti-system party leaves space for fragmented, volatile populism.
In the field of religion and identity, the legacy of the interwar period is particularly striking: Melissa Feinberg shows continuities between interwar anti-feminist activism and today’s anti-gender movements. Then as now, defenders of ‘traditional family’ framed feminism as foreign and destructive, forging alliances with right-wing populists. Interwar campaigns against women workers and suffrage parallel contemporary crusades against LGBTQ rights and the ‘gender lobby’. Gender equality is repeatedly politicized during crises of identity, and anti-gender discourse creates powerful coalitions. Paul Hanebrink traces how interwar Hungary’s Christian nationalism – blaming Jews, suppressing democracy, linking religion and territorial revisionism – finds echoes in Viktor Orbán’s illiberal Christian democracy. Today, migrants, feminists and LGBTQ communities replace Jews as primary ‘others’, but the structure is the same: moral panic, demographic fear and claims to defend civilization. Christian nationalism adapts across eras, licensing assaults on pluralism by invoking tradition. Darina Volf shows how interwar Slovakia fused Catholicism with national identity, marginalizing Protestants. This legacy fuels today’s polarization, which is visible in culture wars over abortion, LGBTQ rights and the Istanbul Convention. Then, as now, appeals to Catholic moral authority divide society and weaken liberal democracy.
In the field of the history of violence, too, connections can be drawn between the history of the interwar period and the present day. Ota Konrád compares Czechoslovakia’s democratic transitions in 1918, 1945 and 1989, showing that democracies risk collapse when they define ‘the people’ ethnically and justify violence against outsiders. The endurance of illiberal rhetoric in today’s Central Europe shows how fragile these balances remain. Daniel Siemens warns that focusing only on fascism as violent practice or only as ideology misses how both interacted. Interwar militias mobilized through rituals, violence and utopian visions; today’s radical right lacks comparable paramilitarism, but reuses symbols and moral panics.
Taken together, the chapters reveal that the interwar period offers not a simple blueprint, but a repertoire of warnings and insights for the present. While contexts differ, recurring patterns of crisis, exclusion and democratic fragility highlight enduring risks.
The interwar years demonstrate that ‘crisis’ is never a neutral description, but a powerful story that can reshape politics. In Weimar Germany, economic hardship and fiscal disputes were narrated as existential crises of democracy, justifying emergency decrees and sidelining parliament. Today, crises such as financial collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic or geopolitical tensions are again framed as urgent states of exception that permit extraordinary executive powers. The lesson is that how societies talk about crisis – whether as a moment for reform or as justification for bypassing democracy – can determine whether institutions are strengthened or hollowed out.
Across cases, democracy faltered when national identity was defined narrowly and pitted against threatening ‘others’. In interwar Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Slovakia, Jews, feminists and political opponents were depicted as alien elements. Today, migrants, Roma, feminists and LGBTQ communities serve as new scapegoats. The rhetoric is strikingly similar: defending family, nation and religion against corrupting outsiders. The broader lesson is that exclusionary identity politics provides a ready-made script for illiberals, converting social anxieties into mobilization. Recognizing this continuity helps explain why culture wars carry such destabilizing weight in present-day Europe.
Interwar constitutions often combined majoritarianism with strong centralism, leaving minorities poorly protected. Poland and Romania’s reluctance to devolve power after 1989 shows how these traditions persist. The lesson is that the rule of law depends not only on horizontal checks (separation of powers) but also on vertical ones: robust local self-government, real minority rights and inclusive constitutional definitions of the nation. Where these are absent, pluralism erodes and authoritarian majoritarianism flourishes.
Czechoslovakia’s three transitions (1918, 1945 and 1989) demonstrate that tolerance or rejection of violence shapes democracy’s trajectory. The nonviolent Velvet Revolution produced legitimacy and stability, while the sanctioned ethnic cleansing of 1945 destroyed democratic culture. The interwar fascist movements likewise reveal how practices of violence, once normalized, rapidly transform political horizons. The lesson is that democratic societies must remain vigilant against both symbolic and physical forms of violence, as these redraw what is considered politically possible.
Finally, the fate of small states in interwar Europe underscores that democracies survive not in isolation, but through supportive international orders. Czechoslovakia’s collapse in the 1930s was tied to the unravelling of Versailles, just as the stability of 1989 owed much to European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) integration. Today, as international frameworks weaken under nationalist pressure, the lesson is that supranational alliances remain crucial bulwarks of democracy.
Together, these chapters warn that while history does not repeat mechanically, interwar Europe offers sobering lessons: democracy is most at risk when crises are narrated in ways that legitimize exclusion, centralization and violence, and when international frameworks fail to hold. At the same time, it teaches that resilience is possible: through inclusive identities, institutional pluralism, nonviolent political cultures and strong international anchoring.
Martin Schulze Wessel is a German historian and has been Professor of Eastern and Southeastern European History at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich since 2003. His research focuses on the history of Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Eastern Europe, as well as religious history and imperial history. Since 2004, he has been Director of the Collegium Carolinum. He is a co-founder of the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission. From 2012 to 2016, he was Chairman of the Association of German Historians. His most recent publication, The Overlooked Nation, is a study of the interrelated German–Ukrainian relations since the nineteenth century.